Quote of the Day

Though fashion imitates the tone of innovation and exploits the myth of its value, the aim of fashion is standardization; the goal of fashion’s creators is a successful formula. The avant-garde artist, by contrast, is interested in discovery and self-transcendence. When an avant-garde invention becomes fashionable—as, say, collage in visual art or associational syntax in poetry has—then it begins to seem decadent, and the genuine vanguard artist feels in his gut that this new fashion is a milestone he is obliged to transcend.